Building Community Coalitions for eCommerce: Client-based Learning and Web Development during a Pandemic Lockdown

Abstract

In this experience report, I describe the process that allowed a coalition of interests to come together during the opening months of the global COVID-19 pandemic to provide economic relief for local businesses across the region that had been shuttered by lockdown orders; in particular, this report focuses on the kinds of advocacy necessary at various levels of the coalition: Advocacy for developers and designers, for business owners, and for students. After narrating the genesis of the project and outlining its scope, I discuss problems related to client-based learning projects in web design, explain how the project structure sought to address and overcome these problems, and then present the results: i.e., what actually happened when we tried it and how it all ended up. Finally, the report discusses how this project has changed over time and concludes by reflecting on the nature of community coalitions.